War on crime needs new weapons, initiatives

For blacks and Hispanics, they are the weapons of mass destruction because of the damage they've wrought in the war on crime.

But for the U.S. Justice Department scrambling to deal with a crack epidemic that began sweeping the nation 40 years ago, and for New York City Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg determined to make the streets safe, the weapons were not only justified but were necessary.

Today, however, the federal mandatory minimum sentence laws for low-level drug offenses have been shelved on orders of U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder.

And a federal judge in New York has ruled the city's stop-and-frisk program is unconstitutional because it violates the rights of individuals who are targeted by police.

We have long argued that giving law enforcement permission to target one group of Americans because of pre-conceived notions about them is not only unlawful, but is a travesty of justice.

We have gone so far as to caution against the use of surveillance cameras on the streets because of invasion- of-privacy concerns.

Rather than fight the judge's ruling, Mayor Bloomberg and all other mayors confronting the very real problem of crime in the black and Hispanic communities should work to come up with programs that pass constitutional muster and do not result in a broad-brush approach to crime-fighting.

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War on crime needs new weapons, initiatives

For blacks and Hispanics, they are the weapons of mass destruction because of the damage they've wrought in the war on crime.